


He Knows So Much About These Things

by chokingonwhys



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bad Dreams, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Pining, brief mention of alcohol, pre-Silvergifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21794017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chokingonwhys/pseuds/chokingonwhys
Summary: He acknowledged that he was probably smelting out the slag of mundane facts to craft an idyll that could never be.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	He Knows So Much About These Things

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from the Smiths song This Charming Man, of course.

Celebrimbor rarely slept, truly slept, not unless physical exertion had exhausted him utterly. Most nights he rolled up in quilts and propped himself on an abundance of down-stuffed pillows and plump embroidered cushions, wriggled into a comfortable nest, and drifted idly through dreams and memories. They were not all good memories. 

When he felt pleased with the day’s labors, he wandered among his earliest days in Valinor, enoying the peculiar shadows that appeared just after the evening Mingling. The stillness in the shifting silver light made each movement of the body seem superfluid and illusory. There was a dissociative kind of peace that came with such surreality. He acknowledged that he was probably misremembering, smelting out the slag of mundane facts to craft memories of an idyll that could never be, but he allowed himself this temporary respite.

A satisfying resolution to a mercantile or administrative snarl-up brought a pleasant lightheadedness as he relived the fierce and freeing joy of the Mereth Aderthad. He danced with childhood playmates long separated, he drank with distant relations and resolved loudly to diminish that distance. He let himself believe that his people truly could pass through sorrow to find joy.

After Annatar came, though, Celebrimbor was surprised to find himself having more and more troubled nights. No sweet surcease came, only flashes of his uncles sniping impotently at each other, or distracting flickers of portents half-remembered. The worst were the nights he was stuck in the interminable dread before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, when months were filled with intolerable waiting and preparing and wondering and stockpiling and endless obsessive planning, such that the fëa grew numb. When he woke from these dreams he felt so, so very old. 

Annatar never really claimed to be an Ainu, nor did he spell out just how powerful his gifts and promises might prove themselves to be, but he never denied even the wildest rumors. Celebrimbor resolved often to ask his advice, reasoning that at the worst Annatar would only pity him. The ideal outcome, however, would be twofold: Annatar would share with him the means to ease his heart and teach him the secrets to truly controlling one’s own mind; and he would be warmed by Celebrimbor’s regard for and trust in his wisdom. He imagined the two of them growing closer, devising schematics and formulae in companionable silence, or practicing clever rhetoric while sharing a bottle of cool white wine on a balcony under the stars. 

Then he shook himself fully awake, and washed and dressed and gathered himself to face a daily bulletin of life’s little pleasures and quandaries. Stoic pragmatism had been hammered into him by a long brutal Age of defeat after defeat, and after that centuries of the grinding slog of rebuilding a continent and a people. Hope for the best, expect the worst. He never did bring himself to open up to Annatar, not the way he imagined he one day might.

He told Sauron everything.

Well, almost.

**Author's Note:**

> Concrit is welcome!
> 
> I'm mywoesaregranular on Tumblr ♥


End file.
